Gandhi's grandson talks building a culture of nonviolence

Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, spoke at Salt Lake Community College on Feb. 29, 2012, about creating a culture of nonviolence.

“Today our relationships with each other are based on self-interest,” says Gandhi. That foundation creates a problem when we don’t get anything from the relationship.

Instead, Gandhi says that relationships should be founded on four principles:

Respect

Understanding

Acceptance

Appreciation

“We are not independent individuals,” says Gandhi. We are interconnected with each other and with nature.The role of each person is to create a better society for everyone.

“When we understand that role we need to play,” says Gandhi, “then we can accept each other as human beings.”Labeling people gets in the way of understanding them because the person beneath the label is forgotten.

Loving respectful relationships between parents and children make nonviolence possible. Gandhi suggests that rather than punishing children, the parents need to do penance.

Gandhi took his father 18 miles into town for a conference when he was younger. His father gave a list of things for Gandhi to accomplish and told Gandhi to be back at 5 p.m. Gandhi got engrossed in a John Wayne double feature and didn’t pick up his father until 6 p.m.

When his dad asked why he was late, Gandhi lied and sad that the car wasn’t ready. His dad knew differently and said that he, as a parent, must have done something wrong to make Gandhi believe that Gandhi needed to lie.

The father decided to walk home and would not get in the vehicle. Gandhi followed him in the vehicle for the five or six hours it took to get home feeling bad all the way.

Gandhi will be speaking at the Salt Lake City Public Library on Feb. 29, 2012 at 7 p.m.​This story was originally published at examiner.com. Links have been updated July 2016.